Update (11/12/2014):

Stretch Goal: 2000 USD

Since we are so close to our original goal (thanks a lot to everyone who helped make it happen, without your support this would not have been possible), I thought I could offer stretch goals. If the fund raising reaches 2000 USD, I will dedicate a full month for diaspora promotion, in addition to the earlier promise of working a full month on diaspora packaging.

This will include talks, workshops on diaspora and privacy at schools, colleges, clubs and other organizations. I could organize a minimum of 30 such events. I have a good network across my home state of Kerala, India when I did Pirate Cycling for a whole month (see https://poddery.com/tags/piratecycling). Some events could be organized outside Kerala if I get the necessary support from local groups. I have already delivered many talks and workshops on diaspora, privacy, encryption etc. This would bring more diaspora users, contributors and possibly more pods and podmins. I would campaign to create more local pods hosted in India and would do local crowd funding to setup more pods.

Like Pirate Cycling, a dedicated campaign like this would attract media attention which would amplify the effort even more. This will also involve a wider set of people in diaspora as organizing events like this need a grass roots effort.

Any amount over 1000 USD will be used to support this diaspora promotion campaign. This money will be used to cover my travel expenses and possibly expenses of more people if there is an interest from more people to join the team, in that case, 30 person days will be dedicated for this campaign.

If you are interested in this campaign join this loomio group and mention how you can help.

https://www.loomio.org/g/6f8uYkMm/indian-pirates-diaspora-yatra

Campaign website: http://yatra.diasporafoundation.org

Original story:

A comment on 'Why Not Diaspora?' at FOSS Force by a user mad4linux, http://fossforce.com/2014/03/diaspora/

I'm a Debian Developer (official member of the debian project), I was a Senior Systems Administrator with Red Hat's engineering operations and now a Free Software consultant.

I have been working on packaging diaspora over last two years in my part time. Your contribution will help me to work full time so I can finish the work I started sooner and get more people to setup diaspora pods for themselves.

This would make diaspora installation on debian as easy as 'apt-get install diaspora'. Currently installation of diaspora takes hours and familiarity with system administration (during DebUtsav at Amrita last month, it took the participants over 3 hours to get the basic service up excluding setting up nginx/apache).

I already have a working diaspora package, which can be installed following instructions from https://wiki.debian.org/Diaspora

Sean Tilley, Community Manager, Diaspora Project https://poddery.com/posts/1481595

But there is lot of work to be done before this can be used widely. The tasks I will be working are,

1. Complete packaging of remaining ruby gems

2. Make diaspora package compliant with debian policy

3. Continue mentoring more people start packaging ruby libraries. This would involve support via irc and packaging workshops.

4. Update debian packages which are lagging (when diaspora upstream uses a newer version than what is packaged in debian)

5. Update gems in diaspora upstream (when debian already has a new version of the library)

Fla, podmin at diaspora-fr.org https://poddery.com/posts/1484047

In addition to these specific tasks, I will be able to dedicate time for the following activities,

1. Continue promote diaspora among students and general public by talking about diaspora and organizing diaspora installation workshops.

2. Contribute time to maintaining poddery.com

I would continue working on these tasks in free time, but getting this money will allow me to work on these tasks full time for at least one month.

My previous work on diaspora packaging is listed below:

1. https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=praveen%40debian.org - packages I maintain/co-maintain in debian

2. https://poddery.com/tags/debian-diaspora - regular packaging updates

3. Many talks and workshops on privacy, diaspora, and debian packaging

Connect with me on diaspora at https://poddery.com/u/praveen

Sam Tuke, Open Source evangelist at Collabora and Attitude Media https://poddery.com/posts/1483300

If you are from India and don't have a credit card, you can send money directly to my account via NEFT or cash deposits.

My bank account details:
Name: PRAVEEN ARIMBRATHO DIYIL
A/C: 646101503208
Branch: Erandwana, Pune
Bank: ICICI
IFSC: ICIC0006461

You can also send bitcoins to 1DocbXFp8Yp9HReK3A8QKwEjavDGjYapMA